Early Start: Influencing Social Mobility at a School Level
...proxies for the quality of the K-12 school system are positively correlated with mobility...Social capital indices (Putnam 1995) – which are proxies for the strength of social networks and community involvement in an area – are also positively correlated with mobility
-From Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States by Raj Chetty, Harvard University and NBER; Nathaniel Hendren, Harvard University and NBER; Patrick Kline, UC-Berkeley and NBER; Emmanuel Saez, UC-Berkeley and NBER.
It is so important for all students to graduate because adults who do not have a high school diploma are:
more likely to be incarcerated;
more likely to suffer from poor health;
less likely to earn enough money to support themselves or a family;
more likely to need help from government, social service agencies and charities.
High school graduation is a minimum requirement for successful adulthood today, and yet, approximately 15 percent of the North Carolina students who enter high school each fall will not graduate within four or even five years
-From The North Carolina 4-Year Cohort Graduation Rate, Superintendent Report 2014-15
What does it take to cause Social Change?
Social behavior and structure has its own INERTIA. This is the resistance that groups tend to demonstrate when there is an attempt to implement a change that disrupts existing behaviors or habits.
The older a person is, the more entrenched their habits. The stronger the inertia. The harder it is for them to change.
Thus, to have a better chance of success, social change needs to start with the young, so that the next generation has a better life.
As mentioned in the research paper ‘Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States’ by Raj Chetty et al;
spatial differences in mobility are driven by factors that affect children while they are growing up rather than after they enter labor market.
What are the factors that most strongly affect children that also have an impact on social mobility?
- Quality of Education
- Strength of Family Structures
- Strength of Social Networks and Community involvement
- Segregation
With this in mind, we would like to propose an idea for an app with the following objectives:
- Work in conjunction with the school system to incentivize learning.
- Implementation of gamification to keep students invested in the school system
- Setting up a platform to enable students to form their own communities based on common interests.
- Providing a system by which parents can conveniently track their children’s academic progress.
Watch the video on:
https://app.biteable.com/videos/preview/774199/b8aee9be646b3fc6ec650e1c2734d75bb1c03cd4
